Soon after I got all my recent posting done about our heavy work on the name-choosing front that one Saturday, Shelly cornered me one evening and insisted that we take the Fifteen Contenders and cull them down further. During the course of the conversation, we realized that the 15 names could be divided easily into three equal groups of five: names that I was the primary proponent of, names that Shelly was the primary proponent of, and names that we both seemed to be joint proponents of. My five were Jane, Paige, Mary, Tessa, and Faith. Shelly's were Katherine, Jenna, Georgia, Hazel, and Maria. The joint names, of course, were Sarah, Julia, Leah, Rachel, and Melanie. (Shelly thought that I would have jointly sponsored Maria with her, but she was surprised to learn that I am an advocate of the English version of the name, but not the Spanish/Portuguese/Latin version - Maria and Mary are the same name, after all, so one cannot endorse both versions).

Shelly's suggestion was that we each voluntarily eliminate one or two of the names in our own sponsorship category. Under duress, I admitted that of the five that I was sponsoring, Faith was lowest on my list. Faith got axed.

Shelly's turn. She picked Hazel, and it summarily bit the dust.

She pressed me for another elimination. I was torn. Jane has been my personal top choice pretty much ever since Annie got crossed off the list, so it was untouchable. But I got the sense that Shelly really had negative feelings towards Paige and Tessa (in contrast to the fact that I actually kind of like all of the names she's sponsoring (okay, except for Maria, about which I'm lukewarm at best, given that it's the same as Mary, which I really like)). And I didn't want to eliminate a name that, given her feelings, possibly had a chance. So I asked her which name she liked least - Paige or Tessa. I would eliminate the one she had the most negative feelings about. She didn't like having to choose between two names she didn't really like, but she chose Paige.

Shelly's turn. She admitted that as much as she likes Georgia, it's probably not one she wants to use as a first name. She made sure to reserve its use as a possible middle name (we haven't even really discussed middle names very much, but I think we're agreed that we're both open to some crazy ideas for middle names that we wouldn't consider for first names*), and she eliminated it.

Then we both realized that of the five jointly sponsored names, as they say, "One of these things is not like the others." Melanie, though it is a fine name that we both like, isn't in the same league with Julia, Rachel, Leah, and Sarah. Gone.

That left us with ten names: Jane, Jenna, Julia, Katherine, Leah, Maria, Mary, Rachel, and Sarah, and Tessa.

Just to see where we were, I suggested that we each use a secret ballot to rank those ten names in order of our preference. We could then compare how we each feel about each of them, and see where we're in agreement - whether it be that we agree we like a name, or we agree that we don't like a name as much. We assigned 10 points to each of our first choice names, 9 to second choice, and so on, down to 1 point for our tenth choices. Our lists looked pretty different from each other. But when you totaled up each name's points, there were some pretty striking things. The scores went like this:

Leah (15)
Julia (15)
Rachel (14)
Sarah (14)
Katherine (13)
Jane (12)
Maria (5)
Mary (5)
Jenna (5)
Tessa (4)

Two distinct tiers. Of course, the jointly sponsored names were probably bound to do well, but it was also interesting that Katherine was so high, thanks to the fact that I actually ranked it higher than Tessa, which I was sponsoring. Jane only got to where it is because it got ten points from me. For the record, Shelly's ten-pointer was Leah.

It became obvious to me that, based on the scores, a couple more names needed to go. Tessa didn't get much love from either of us. I was sad to see it go, because it's such a wonderful name. But it's gone. Jenna was also eliminated. Mary and Maria were allowed to stay on the list because they're essentially the same name and therefore count as ten points. In fact, I tried as hard as I could to convince Shelly to eliminate Maria because it's the same name as Mary, but she wouldn't budge. Yet.

This whole process and conversation probably took less time than it has taken me to write about it here. We went from 15 names down to 8 in just a few minutes. This was more than a week ago now, and we haven't really discussed names since then. Up until now, it's been a process of making sure we have considered all of our possible options, and eliminating non-contenders that we're not serious about. I think we've finally arrived at a list of names that we're serious about (except for Maria, which (as I think I've mentioned) is the same name as Mary and therefore needs to be eliminated because the baby's native language will be English). The points listed above aren't necessarily going to come back into play. I think we're going to stew over this list for a while.

Again, the final eight, in alphabetical order:

Jane
Julia
Katherine
Leah
Maria
Mary
Rachel
Sarah

* I mean, look at our two daughters' middle names. Virginia is a brash forward-looking tribute to our adopted home state, and Lynn is deliberately intended to be a little funny, as it is my Dad's name.